


The Mathematics of Love and Art

by orphan_account



Series: More Beautiful for Having Been Broken [5]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Art, Dating, F/F, Polyamory, Rock and Roll, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-23 19:43:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: This was originally written as a one-shot for the tumblr prompt looking for Maggie taking Astra to the museum.  It's turning into a multi-chapter exploration of things, early in the Maggie/Astra/Alex poly relationship, of the first time Maggie and Astra spend a weekend alone without Alex, and the nurturing of their intimacy.   They discover things about themselves and each other, and their bond becomes stronger as they fall more in love with each other in ways that support their individual relationship and the poly relationship as a whole.In the mathematics of their love, there would be no remainder.





	1. Chapter 1

Alex was wearing comfortable jeans and a soft sweater, a backpack slung over one shoulder, hastily packed, with clothes spilling out the top zipper.  Her face was luminous; she was clearly looking forward to this trip.  She’d found a Zendo up near Napa and was heading up for a long weekend retreat, to sit and meditate and be around nature.  Astra and Maggie supported Alex’s meditation practice, as it was part of what was keeping her sober.  But neither felt inclined to go with her.  Astra didn’t particularly understand Buddhism, and Maggie was not terribly interested in spending a weekend in silence.  Maybe at some point, she thought, but not this time.

So Alex kissed each of them on the mouth as she was leaving.  “Have fun, you two,” she said, with twinkling eyes, and departed.

The apartment felt weirdly empty at first.  They had not had much time apart from each other since Alex had come home from her stay in rehab, spending a great deal of time forging the relationship between the three of them, and negotiating what was and was not acceptable within its boundaries.  

They stood looking at each other, hands on their hips, mirroring each other’s slight anxiety.  They needed to learn to exist as two, because sometimes they would be.

Maggie spoke first.  “So, what would you like to do today?”

Astra frowned.  “I was going to ask you the same.”

Maggie chuckled.  “Well, how about a museum?”

Astra shrugged.  “Alright.”

  
  


****

  
  


They wandered through several wings that Astra strolled through at a pace that was leisurely, but clearly indicated that she wanted to keep moving.  Botticelli and his curvaceous women, Caravaggio and his miserable humans all rolling their eyes in agony.  “There are a lot of nudes,” Astra observed, sounding somewhat detached.

“Yeah well,” Maggie replied, hazarding a few guesses.  “I guess they were taking influence from the Greeks who came before them and they liked nudes a lot.”

Astra smirked a little but said nothing.  It was clear that these were somewhat interesting on a cultural level, but weren’t reaching her soul in any special way.  And Maggie, well… she was probably not the best guide for a tour like this, since she didn’t know a lot about art.  Or at least, she thought she didn’t.

“Hey I have an idea,” she said.  “I think there’s a wing that you’d find a little more interesting.”  She accosted a prematurely balding young man in a dark blue museum uniform blazer.  “Hey, buddy.  Where’s the wing with the paintings that don’t look like anything?”

He gave her a disdainful look.  “I’m sorry?”

She waved a hand around.  “These are all … they look like stuff.  Bible scenes, whatever.  You can tell what they’re supposed to be.  Where are the ones that aren’t supposed to look like stuff?  You know, like…”  She hunted for a second.  “Jackson Pollock?”

He smiled tightly.  “You’re looking for the abstract expressionist wing.”  And he pointed it out on a map.  

“Thanks!” she replied, and grabbed Astra’s hand.  “Come on.  I think this might be more your speed.”

Astra tangled her fingers in Maggie’s and said softly, “Why did we come here?  You are not that interested in art.”

Maggie shrugged.  “I dunno.  I thought you’d like to... learn about our culture and stuff.”

Astra nodded.  “I would, but I want to learn it as you experience it, so I can love it as you love it.”

They strolled slowly down the long corridor.  

Maggie thought about that for a moment.  “We had museums in Omaha, but even that was a good two hour hike from where we lived.  I couldn’t just roll out of bed in the morning and decide to go look at some famous art that day.  And trust me, the museums in Omaha… well, they’re better now, so I’m told, but they couldn’t even touch this one.”  She frowned a little.  “I can’t help wondering sometimes if I’d be any different of a person if I’d had access to that type of stuff.”

Astra squeezed her hand in a gentle but firm grip.  “But I love this person, and so does Alex,” she said, and her voice almost had a scolding tone to it.

Maggie chuckled as they passed through a wide shaft of light that pierced warm and buttery through the giant windows that lined the hallway.  “Oh, I know that, Astra.  I just mean… you know.  I wonder.  That’s all.”

They walked in an easy silence for a few more minutes while they considered this.  “But that is fundamental to who you are.  Where you grew up.  Just as where I grew up is fundamental to me, and who I am.”

“Your family wouldn’t have wanted you bonded to someone like me on Krypton, would they,” Maggie speculated.  It wasn’t a question; she knew that Kara and her family were some sort of nobility.  Maggie’s family was “the help.”  There was no debate to be had there.

“No,” Astra acknowledged.  “But my world collapsed in fire because of my people’s arrogance.  So perhaps you should not use that as a measure of your value.”

Maggie smirked.  “Well, we have a little more mobility here, but trust me; there’s plenty of class stratification to go around in our society too.”

They arrived at the Modern wing, and Maggie found the sign that pointed toward the Abstract Expressionists.  “C’mon,” she whispered, and pulled Astra along.

They walked through a small room of deKoonings, their bright ribbons of color that billowed down and across the large canvases.  Astra paused before a few of them and muttered something that Maggie couldn’t quite make out.  And then before another, she muttered, “Parabolic curve.”

“What?”

“I like these,” she answered.  And they kept moving.

They found the Jackson Pollocks that Maggie had set out to find, and Astra paused before one, staring at it for a long moment with a fixation that Maggie rarely saw in her.  

“Do you… do you like it?”

Astra nodded slowly.  “Very much.  The mathematics of it are compelling.”

“The… the mathematics?”  Maggie was a little confused.

Astra nodded.  “Yes.  It is a fractal, do you see?”

Maggie shook her head.  

Astra then drew her finger down and across the the air in front of the painting.  “Look, see what he has done.  If you see it as a grid…. Broken into equal sized squares, yes?”

Maggie watched her finger and listened to her voice and tried to follow as she explained.  She nodded.

“It is not random, where he has placed a pattern and where he has left space.  And you see, as the iterative pattern repeats, it grows smaller… This is like a diffusion-limited aggregation fractal.  Each small sub-branch looks very much like the larger…”  And the she pointed to a curving splash of black.  “Here is a branch…”  And then to a smaller, dramatically curving splash of orange that moved in a different direction but, suddenly, Maggie saw how its arc was related to the first, larger arc.  “... and then these smaller ones … the placement can only be intentional…”

And then she launched into  an explanation that Maggie actually managed to kind of follow.  Her mind was blown.  She had never had someone explain abstract art to her this way.  She’d had a few dates who were probably making shit up about what emotion the artist was trying to express, but here was Astra, who was a soldier-scientist, breaking it down for her in ways that were completely understandable. 

“He is finding order in the universe through its mathematics and then exploring those mathematics visually,” Astra finished.

Maggie bit her lip and gazed up at her.  “So what you’re saying is, you like it?”

Astra smiled.  “Yes.  Very much.”

Maggie chuckled.  “Good.”  She was weirdly turned on by what had just happened.  She was seeing the other side of Astra’s brilliance now.  Astra had just made her understand Jackson Pollock.  That was no small feat.  

“You say you don’t know much about art, yet you knew enough to know that this is what I would like,” Astra commented.  She had a little color in her cheeks, and Maggie recognized the way she was looking at her.  

“That’s not because I know art,” Maggie parried.  “It’s just because I know you.”

“Can’t it be both?”

Maggie shrugged.  “If you insist.  You should whip out that big, sexy brain more often.  It’s pretty hot.”

Astra was smirking now.  She turned away from Maggie and gazed back at the painting.  “What else is in this wing?”

Maggie shrugged.  “I dunno, there’s some Picasso that way, and then there’s the uh …”  She peered at the signage for a moment.  “American Modern that way.”

They marched off in the direction of American Modern and Georgia O’Keefe’s cow skulls and terribly lurid flowers.  Frankly, the chord they had just struck had Maggie wanting to drag Astra home and tear her clothes off, but she was determined to keep going with this date.  

“You made a good choice,”  Astra remarked as they walked.  “Your instincts are excellent.”

“What can I tell you?”  Maggie replied.  “I have a lot of practice listening to them.”

“Hm,” Astra responded.  “And what are they telling you now?”

They paused in front of the largest of the cow skulls.  “They’re telling me you don’t like this painting of a cow skull.”

Astra made a wordless gesture of assent.  Then she pointed over to a flower hanging a few feet to their right.  “I like that one, though,” she remarked after a moment.

Good old Georgia and her vagina flowers, Maggie thought, trying not to snicker.  “Do you, now?”

Astra nodded.  “Yes,”  she answered, and her mouth twisted a little the way it did when she was saying something she knew would get under Maggie’s skin.  She continued gazing at the painting, a very suggestive lily in particularly warm, dusky pinks and added, “It looks like you.”

Maggie bit back a curse.  “Oh, it’s like that, now?”  She gazed at the picture now, not looking at Astra.   _ You beautiful asshole, _ she thought.

“Indeed,” she replied.  They kept their voices at museum level.  “Unless that is a problem for you, Detective.”

“Not at all, General.”

Astra pointed to another orchid a few feet away.  “That one looks like Alex, don’t you think?”

Maggie bit her lip.  She wasn’t wrong, actually.  If she had to pick one painting out of the ones in this room that looked like Alex’s vagina, that would be the one.  “I guess.”  She glanced around.  “I don’t see one that looks like you, though.”

“Perhaps you need to inspect more closely.”

“The paintings?”

“The original.”

Maggie squeezed Astra’s hand.  “Aaaaaand we’re done here.”  

Astra feigned innocence but she knew perfectly well that she’d succeeded in ruffling Maggie’s feathers.  “No more flowers today?”

“No more  _ paintings _ ,” Maggie replied, still keeping her voice soft.

“What are we doing now, Maggie?” she pressed, and her amusement was evident as they walked briskly from the Modern wing.

“We’re going home.”

“We are?”

“Yeah.  And I’m gonna inspect your flower.”

A moment of silence as they sped down the hall, Astra having to keep stride with tiny Maggie and her very motivated gait.

“You mean we’re going to fuck, yes?”

“Goddamnit.”

“Yes?”

“YES.”


	2. Chapter 2

Astra found a funny thing had happened.  On the course of their trip home from the museum, Maggie had somehow managed to turn the tables on her.  Astra had left feeling rather pleased with herself that she had managed to verbally torment Maggie until she insisted they leave immediately to go home and have sex, but now, the trip was taking longer than it should have, and as she sat on the roaring bike with her arms around Maggie’s waist and her body pressed against her back, she found that she was probably not much better off than Maggie was in terms of her sheer impatience to get home and carry her diminutive lover off to bed.

The rumble of the bike between her thighs was probably not helping, she realized.

They arrived home and took one look at the stairs leading up, and Astra swore under her breath, grabbed Maggie in her arms, and cleared the four flights in one shot.  She landed on the tiled landing with Maggie grinning up at her, looking like she could have had her right there.

But Maggie already had her keys out, hurrying to open the door while Astra’s fingers tugged at her belt and teased the skin that peeked out above the top of her jeans.  The keys scraped, the door groaned open, and the two of them tumbled into the loft, the door slamming itself shut behind them.  Astra grabbed Maggie’s small waist, pressed her against the wall next to the door, and leaned in for a hungry kiss.  

But Maggie, being Maggie, tilted her head and Astra caught her on the cheek instead.  She growled in frustration.  Maggie grinned at her.

“Give me your mouth,” Astra demanded, her hand tracing up Maggie’s body, making a rough path up her waist, over her breast, up to her shoulder.

Maggie tilted up on her toes and nipped once at Astra’s bottom lip, her tongue flashing across it for a half-second, and then rocked back down.  Astra glared at her and leaned down again, and again, Maggie turned her head.  This time, Astra was ready for her and she simply sank her teeth into the soft skin of Maggie’s neck.  She got the little sharp intake of breath that she wanted.  Maggie wanted her mouth, too.  She was just playing those little teasing games.

She laid gentle bites all down the side of her neck, then up to her ear, where she flicked her tongue once around it.  She felt the press of Maggie’s hips against her.  Maggie looked up at her with eyes that smoldered and Astra said again, “Give me your mouth.”

Maggie took Astra’s face between her hands and drew it down to her, and Astra felt the tip of Maggie’s tongue snake out and tease her lips, and then withdraw.  Astra groaned.  The ache was getting to be too much.  She hooked her hands behind Maggie’s thighs and lifted her off the floor.  Maggie’s legs wrapped around her.  With one hand supporting underneath her firm little ass and the other around her waist, she stalked off to the bedroom with Maggie’s small body wriggling against her.  

And Maggie was laughing.  Rao, but she was laughing.  She knew what she was doing to Astra, loved that she had so excited.  Astra grinned.  “You are terrible,” she breathed. 

“The worst,” Maggie agreed.

Astra tossed her onto the bed and began tugging Maggie’s shirt up over her head.

“Are you going to fuck me?” she asked softly, teasingly.

“That depends,” Astra answered.  “Are you going to kiss me?”

“If you’re nice,” Maggie answered, shimmying out of her jeans.

Astra tore off her own shirt and settled on top of Maggie, careful to mind her weight.  “I am always nice,” she replied, and she pushed Maggie’s head back and kissed the base of her throat.  “Always.”

Maggie sighed a little sigh and looked up at her.  “I like this half-naked thing,” she decided after a moment.  “It’s sexy.”

Astra smirked and looked at all of Maggie’s delicious brown skin.  “I like this entirely naked thing,” she responded.  “It is also very …”  She hunted for a word, one of Maggie’s words, that expressed what she meant.  “...hot?”

Maggie laughed.  They stayed that way for a moment, grinning at each other.  Astra leaned down and kissed Maggie’s mouth, and Maggie didn’t play with her this time.  She kissed back, warm and deep and wet and soft, the way she did when she really meant it.  For all the fires that Maggie knew how to light in Astra’s body, these deep, hot kisses were the most special.  They stayed there, moving against each other, enjoying the feel of each other’s bare chests, and the tender exploration of each other’s warm, giving mouths.

But after some minutes of this, they stopped.  She felt strange without Alex’s commentary, or Alex’s hand touching her back.  It occurred to her that this would be the first time they would make love to each other without Alex present.  It had been discussed, of course, and they agreed that it was important that each of the individual relationships needed to be nurtured as well as the whole.  In fact, Astra suspected it was half of Alex’s motivation for taking this meditative retreat.  

Maggie saw the hesitance on her face and smiled gently at her.  “It’s weird without her, isn’t it?”

Astra nodded.  

“We don’t have to,” Maggie offered.

“No, I want to,” Astra replied.  She rearranged herself, relaxing onto the bed next to Maggie and curling around her tiny frame, chin resting on her shoulder.

“But it is weird,” Maggie pressed.

“Yes.”   It was weird without Alex’s breathing and heartbeat in the room.

She felt Maggie kiss the top of her head.  

“Do you think if we had met some other way, that we would still have fallen for each other?”  Maggie asked after a moment.

“I saw your soul,” Astra answered, her fingers drawing light patterns on Maggie’s bare stomach.  “So, yes.”

She felt Maggie’s body shudder with a silent chuckle.  “And you don’t care that I don’t belong to your faith.”

Astra shook her head and kissed Maggie’s chest.   “I, along with my niece and a handful others, am the last.  That I am alive at all is a testament to my faith.  It is enough.  Love… is enough.”

Maggie stroked her hair now, ran her fingers down Astra’s white streak, and kissed the top of her head again.  

“Wouldn’t you rather that Krypton hadn’t died?”

Astra grew sentimental then.  “It is impossible, Maggie.  I long for my home sometimes, my old home.  I sometimes long for its music, the skyline of Argo city at sunrise, the way the air smelled when I was a child, before the pollution had become too intense to breathe outdoors for very long.  The color of the soil, which was different than Earth’s, dark and alive with sparkling minerals.  But all of it has gone.  I have only my last remaining family, and the pieces of my culture preserved in my sister’s AI, and you.  You and Alex are my home now, and perhaps the best living evidence that my god ever cared for me.”

Maggie shifted, and tilted Astra’s head up to face her, and kissed her again, with tenderness and care.  

Astra dwelled in it for a long moment, breathed Maggie’s breath, felt the warm, salty tears that slipped down Maggie’s cheeks as they kissed.  She pulled back, frowning.  “Why do you weep?”

Maggie smiled, seeming a little embarrassed.  “I didn’t understand what we meant to you… what… well, what  _ I _ meant to you.”

Astra kissed her again, and then asked, “Did you think I only wanted you so that I could still have Alex?”

Maggie’s chin trembled.  “You know … I don’t … see myself the way you do, I guess.”

Astra kissed her mouth, then her chin, then her throat, softly and carefully.  “Maggie,” she murmured, “I saw your beautiful spirit long before you saw mine.  I ached for you long before you realized that you ached for me.  We will talk more about why you do not accept yourself as remarkable and beautiful, but you are.”  She kissed across Maggie’s collarbones, tasting her skin and luxuriating in her scents, the mingling of herbal soaps and the cocoa butter shampoo she used and the fresh linen smell of her clothes that lingered on her skin.

Maggie’s fingers tangled in her hair.  Astra glanced up and saw that she was weeping openly now, tears streaming down her cheeks.  “I’ve spent my whole life being told I wasn’t good enough,” she whispered.

“All lies,” Astra answered is a soft whisper, and kissed her body some more.  “You are Maggie Sawyer, and you are fierce and beautiful and strong, and you are precious to me.”  Her mouth made careful, loving trails along her breasts, kissing the dark nipples that stiffened at the touch of her lips.  She moved down her ribs and her flat belly.  “And I am making love to you now because I want  _ you _ , and I am fortunate that Rao has blessed me enough that you want this.”

“I do,” Maggie gasped, as Astra’s mouth made its way over and down her belly, down the bones of her hips.  “God, I do, Astra.”

Astra was always far more gentle with Maggie than she ever was with Alex.  With Alex, she had always been rough and hungry; it was simply their way.  But with Maggie, she was conscious of how delicate she was, in a way that she wasn’t with Alex.  Maybe it was because she was so much smaller.  Astra wasn’t sure.  But if she was always careful and gentle, she was especially so now, intensely aware of Maggie’s vulnerability.  

She stopped and looked up at Maggie’s face.  She could not understand how anyone could have denied her their love.  She had seen first hand her strength and courage; Astra remembered the day she’d run from their unconventional love, and how Maggie came and pursued her into the mountains.  She had jumped from a plane and floated down into the snow on a bright red parachute.  She was human but she would not be deterred.  She would not let Astra run away.  

And now, Astra was not going to let her run, either.  “The fire in me… celebrates the one  in you,” she whispered, parting Maggie’s thighs and kissing the insides of them.  “You are my beloved, unique in all the worlds.”

And she kissed softly, easing Maggie’s body into bliss with her tongue, in the manner that Alex had shown her.  

 

******

  
  


Later, they lay tangled in each other.  Astra had at some point finally shed her jeans, and  Maggie was resting on Astra’s body, and Astra was holding her close.  “You really love me like that?” Maggie asked, her voice seeming very small.

Astra shook with a silent chuckle.  “Did I not show you?”

Maggie smiled and kissed Astra’s chest, right at the top of the pale, thin scar she bore, that reminder of the day she died.  “Yeah, you did.”

“And do you not feel the same?”

Maggie squeezed Astra’s shoulder.  “Yeah, I do.”  She lifted her head then, and found Astra’s mouth with hers.  “This wasn’t quite what I envisioned when I dragged you out of that museum.”

They spent a moment lost in each other’s kiss, before Astra smiled at her.  “No?”

“No.”

“Are you glad?”

Maggie kissed her again, fiddled with the white streak in Astra’s hair.  “Yeah.  I needed to…”  She trailed off.

“You needed to feel my love,” Astra supplied.  

“Yeah,”  Maggie admitted, her voice catching a little.  

“It has always been so,” Astra promised.  

They were three, but within three, they were two, and their hearts were still finding their way when it came to that.  But they would.  Astra knew.  No matter what was added or what was taken away, their hearts, their bodies, their spirits, were designed to be fit together in infinite combinations, all beautiful.  

In the mathematics of their love, there was no remainder.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie gets Astra to fully appreciate rock and roll. 
> 
> Things get a little hot and sticky.

The sky had turned the color of a blood orange and was rapidly winging its way toward purple by the time Maggie and Astra found their way out of bed.  

Maggie watched Astra stroll naked into the living room, appreciating her like a piece of art.  

A very fuckable piece of art.

A very fuckable piece of art that she was falling more in love with every passing day.

_Jesus Christ, Sawyer._

“Dinner?” she inquired, her eyes settling on the curvature of Astra’s lower back, the jut of her hip as she stood at the glass door that led out onto their deck.  

“Mm,” Astra agreed.  “I am ravenous.”

“What else is new?” Maggie snorted.

“Shall we cook over the fire?”

“Nah, that’s Alex’s thing.  I’m no damn good with the barbecue.”

“That is a shame.  I like the smell of the fire on her.  It is very… _primal_.”

Maggie heard that little note in Astra’s voice, the one that had taken her a little time to be able to pick up on.  Astra liked the smell of fire on Alex because it was a turn-on.  Maggie was amused by this; the smell of barbecue on Alex made her hungry, but that was about it.  She wandered over to the refrigerator and peered inside.   “Mm, well… you’ll have to settle for the smell of stir-fry, because that’s what I’ll be making with these ingredients.”

“Do you have the … _akvari_?”

“The what?”

Astra frowned, trying to find the English word, but coming up dry.  “The small vegetables… round, crunchy, white… you got them from a tin…?”

“Ah! Water chestnuts.”  Maggie remembered.  She had thrown some into a stir-fry, and Astra had reacted very strongly to them.  Apparently they were a dead ringer for some long-lost vegetable of Krypton.  She peered into the cabinet.  “Yep.  You’re in luck.”

Astra strolled into the living room and picked up an iPad, on which she was reading a history of Caesar’s defeat of Pompey at Pharsalus, and reclined on the couch to continue her reading.  Maggie turned on the flame and began heating the oil and dropping in the fresh garlic.  She’d learned her garlic-slicing technique from the movie Goodfellas; she shaved the paper-thin slices with a razor blade and watched them melt into the hot oil.  The smell soon lured Astra in from the living room, and she stood at the edge of the kitchen, still gloriously naked, her head tilted to one side, looking utterly beatific in the blissful way she held her eyes closed, taking in the smells.

Maggie was chopping broccoli when she looked up.  “Babe,” she said, giving her a long, appreciative glance, “you’re gonna make me chop off my fingers or burn dinner if you don’t put some clothes on.”

Astra shrugged.  “The look on your face is almost worth a burned dinner,” she answered, smirking.

“Knock it off.  Go read,” Maggie answered, setting down her knife and crossing her arms.  “I’m serious, I can’t be handling knives while you stand there like that.”

“But I am lonely in the living room,” Astra protested.  

It went unspoken that Alex was not there to curl up next to her while she read.

Maggie came over and kissed her.  “Well, hang out with me, then.  But seriously, go put on some shorts and a tee shirt or something.  All this–”  She gestured at the full, impressive length of Astra’s statuesque, muscular body.  “–is way too distracting.”

Maggie picked up her phone and thumbed through her music collection while Astra disappeared, presumably to put more clothes on.   _Stones_ , she decided.   _Some Girls_ , she decided.  Within moments she was lightly bobbing her head along to its deep, bluesy opening groove with the harp wailing over it, while she chopped more vegetables for dinner.

Astra wandered back in, wearing a loose tee shirts and some soft flannel shorts.  Less distracting than complete nudity, but not by much.  

Astra parked on a stool next to the island where Maggie was working, watching her for a moment.  “What are you doing?”

“Chopping okra.”

“No, no… why are you….?”  She waved a hand at Maggie.  “...moving that way?”

“Huh?”  Maggie looked at her and looked down at herself and realized that Astra was wondering why she was rocking out while she cooked.  “I’m just feeling the music.”  She peered at Astra.  “You’ve seen me do that before, right?”

Astra thought for a moment.  “I suppose I have.”

Maggie went back to chopping.

Then, after a moment:  “But why?”

Maggie set the knife down and walked over to Astra.  “Because it feels good.  Music feels good when you feel it in your body.”

Astra seemed a little bemused by this.

Maggie placed a hand in the middle of Astra’s chest, near her heart.  “Close your eyes.”  Astra obeyed.  “Now, feel this beat.  The heartbeat of the song, right?”  She tapped her hand against Astra’s chest in time with the big beat of the song.  “Feel that?  Feel that beat?  That’s the lifeblood of the song.”

Astra’s eyes remained closed for a moment.  “Groups of four,” she said with a little smile.

“What?”  She continued softly tapping the beat on Astra’s chest, watching her face.

“The heartbeat of the song.  It beats in groups of four.  Each phrase is four beats.  And then the phrases also seem to come in groups of four.  And within each phrase, subdivisions of two, and then of four…”  She tilted her head and listened more.  “Complexity within such deceptive simplicity…”

Maggie shook her head.  “Always with the math.”

Astra opened her eyes and smiled at Maggie, covering Maggie’s hand with hers on her chest.  “Everything is math.”

“No, baby.  I mean, yeah, but, if you make this about the math, you’re missing the point.  Stop counting.  Just feel the beats.  Don’t count the subdivisions.  Just feel them, in your body.”

Astra closed her eyes again, and Maggie kept tapping on her chest, singing along in a quiet, raspy voice with the song:

 _“_ _Yeah French girls they want Cartier  
_ _Italian girls want cars  
_ _American girls want everything in the world  
_ _You can possibly imagine!”_

Astra grinned.  She began to bob her head along to the one, two, three, four.  She began to laugh silently.

“What’s so funny?”

“He does not sing,” Astra chuckled.

“What?”

“He does not sing.  He yells.  In tune.”

Maggie chuckled.  She had a point.  

Astra moved gently with the music.  Maggie moved her hands down to Astra’s hips.  “Now feel it here.”  She pushed against them, encouraging them to keep time with the music.  

After a moment, she felt Astra moving them the way Maggie hoped she would, undulating slowly, easily, softly along with the beat.  “Good,” she encouraged.

Astra’s eyes were still closed.  “They feel best at the two and the four,” she observed.

“You’re not gonna stop counting, are you?”

“No, I am not.”

They laughed quietly.  Maggie stopped for a moment and watched Astra, eyes still closed, letting her body be moved by this raucous rock and roll.  It was sexier than it had any right to be.  She fanned herself.  “Alright,” she said after a moment, “that oil is gonna burn if I don’t start putting stuff in it.”

She saw the little smirk playing around Astra’s lips that told her she was about to say something that was so baldly sexual that it almost didn’t qualify as flirting.  “Don’t,” was all Maggie said.  “I see that look.  Don’t.”

Astra laughed.  “How can I not?” she protested.  “He is singing about fornication!”

Maggie grinned, shaking her head.  Once again, Astra had a point.

  


**********************

 

After dinner, Maggie was thumbing through the back of the Escalando Press, the free local entertainment rag with all the nightclub listings.  

“Hey!” she exclaimed.  “Street Fighting Man is playing tonight at The Korean Theater!”

Astra looked up from her reading.  “What is Street Fighting Man?  And why is the theater Korean?”

Maggie chuckled.  “OK, listen.  Street Fighting Man is a Rolling Stones cover band.  A good one, too.”

“What is a ‘cover band’?”

“It’s a band whose whole gig is that they play the songs of another, more famous artist.”

Astra seemed confused.  “Why would–?”

“Because Stones tickets are like ten thousand dollars and they’re not always on tour.  But you can go see Street Fighting Man do the same material reasonably well for like twenty bucks.”  Maggie was becoming eager now at the prospect of taking Astra to her first rock and roll show.  It couldn’t be better.  “You know the Stones, I just played them for you? ‘Some Girls’?  You also like their song, ‘Gimme Shelter’.   Remember?”

Recognition dawned.  Astra remembered.  “Yes!  It is... magnificent.”  She was smiling as she closed her eyes, seeming to remember the way it made her feel.

Maggie grinned.  “Well, it’s even better live.  We should go!  You’ll love it.”

Astra nodded, her eyes sparkling.  “This is _your_ culture, is it not?  The culture you love, as opposed to the culture you feel that you are _supposed_ to love?”

Maggie nodded.  “Yeah, this is the culture I love.”

 

**********************

 

Astra looked right at home at the show, especially wearing that black Sex Pistols shirt of Alex’s with the sleeves torn off.  It was a little big on Alex, which meant it was a little tight on Astra, in all the right places.  With that and her black jeans and that crazy white streak, she looked about as rock and roll as any girl Maggie had ever taken to a rock and roll show.

Astra had to adjust her hearing once the show started, because the sound was so loud, but the sound system at the Korean was pretty high quality and she loved the feeling of the bass and kick drum in her body.

“THIS IS WHY YOU LOVE THIS?” she shouted over the rip-roaring opening verse of ‘Gimme Shelter’.  “THE LOW FREQUENCIES ARE LIKE HONEY IN MY VEINS!”

Maggie laughed.  No girl she’d ever been out with had ever said anything like that.  She grabbed Astra, and kissed her hard, as the sticky, sloppy, wailing guitars washed over them, and the groove took hold of their bones.  “YOU FEEL IT??”  she shouted back.

Astra nodded vigorously.  Even in the darkened theater, she was luminous.

They rode wave after wave of hot, dirty grooves, and about five songs in, a hush fell, and the piano player’s fingers began grinding out a sweet, mournful riff that Maggie knew well.  It was 'Loving Cup'.  She hooted with joy.  That motherfucker was just as good as Nicky Hopkins.

“You like this song?”

Maggie nodded.  She yanked Astra close to her.  “This is _my_ song!” she exclaimed.  And yeah, she did.  She shouted those lyrics at Astra along with the band’s dead-on-balls Mick Jagger impersonator.

 _“_ _I'm the man on the mountain, come on up.  
_ _I'm the plowman in the valley with a face full of mud._ _  
_ _Yes, I'm fumbling and I know my car don't start._ _  
_ _Yes, I'm stumbling and I know I play a bad guitar._ _  
_ _Give me little drink from your loving cup._   
Just one drink and I'll fall down drunk!”

Astra was smiling down at her and they were pressed against each other, and as the rest of the band kicked in, she surrendered and moved to the song’s deep, dark rhythm.  She wound herself up against Astra’s solid, warm body, and Astra moved with her, and they were in the song, part of it, part of each other, their hips moving together, their mouths teasing each other.  It was hot, ecstatic, transcendent, better than sex or drugs.  It was rock and roll.

 

*******

 

They got home that night and there was no playing like there had been that afternoon.  They barely made it in the door before their hands had plunged underneath each other’s clothes, in pursuit of the raw pleasure they knew could be found there.  Astra was soaking wet through her cotton briefs, and Maggie heard Astra’s soft groan when she discovered that Maggie was in the same condition.  They tugged each other’s jeans down just enough to get fingers into to each other, and stroked at each other, cursing softly and grinding against each other and wanting more, faster.  “You’re holding back,” Maggie panted.  She could feel that Astra wasn’t hitting her as hard as she would do with Alex.

“So are you,” Astra panted back.

“I’m giving you a hundred and ten percent,” Maggie protested.

Astra pushed harder, pressing her back against the wall.  “Not like that,” she rasped in her ear.  “You want to say things, and you’re not.”  Astra stopped for a moment.  “Say things,” she growled. “Please.”

Maggie cursed again, moaned.  “Don’t stop,” she groaned.

Astra thrust once inside her.  “Don’t stop what?” she pressed.

“Don’t stop fucking me,” she answered, moving herself against Astra’s fingers.

They resumed their feverish strokes.

“Harder,” Maggie demanded.  

Astra seemed to hesitate, but then obliged her.  Maggie’s knees almost gave out, and she grabbed with her free hand onto the front of Astra’s shirt to stay on her feet.  

“That’s good,” Maggie panted.  

“Tell me,” Astra sighed in her ear.  

And Maggie let go, and Maggie told her everything.  How good it felt to get fucked this hard, how much she loved the way Astra’s fingers felt inside her, how good was to be deep in Astra’s hot pussy, how she wanted Astra to wreck her over and over tonight.  They came, shivering and hot, supporting themselves against the foyer wall, kissing and biting at each other.  They clung to each other, shaking, until their breathing slowed.

 

****

 

After, they were naked in bed again, this time relaxed and smiling.

“Why did you never let go before?  Why did you never speak to me that way?”

Maggie shrugged.  “You seemed… I don’t know.”  Her hands clasped behind her head, she sighed, “You seemed too perfect.  I didn’t… I guess I thought you wouldn’t like it.”  She glanced at Astra out of the corner of her eye.

“I didn’t,”  Astra answered.  She paused.  “I loved it.”

Maggie laughed.  “How come you never railed me like that before?”

Astra shrugged.  “I was afraid you were … I was afraid I would hurt you.”

Maggie snorted.  “I’m not that tiny.”

Astra chuckled silently.  “You guessed.”

Maggie rolled over and kissed her on the mouth.  “For a genius, you can be pretty dense.”  

Astra embraced her.  “It was the song,” she decided after a moment.

“Hm?”

“The song that you said was yours, that made us dance together.”

“Turned you on, hm?”

Astra shook her head.  “More than that.  You were saying something to me with it.”

“I was?”

“Yes.  I feel so humble with you tonight, Just sitting in front of the fire.  See your face dancing in the flame, Feel your mouth kissing me again…”  She squeezed a little and Maggie squeaked at the tightness of it.  “Maggie, I am... I am drunk on your body.  You are my ... 'loving cup.'  Do you know that?”

Maggie smiled.  “You know how you said you wanted me long before I wanted you?”

Astra nodded.

“That’s… not entirely true.”

“Oh?”

Maggie smiled.  “I was embarrassingly hot for you the first time I saw you.  I didn’t expect you to look like this.  I think I said to Alex, holy shit, she looks like a Greek statue.”

“Hm, thank you.  But… Roman, I think.”

Maggie snorted, then kissed her again.  “Anyway.  You always looked like something beyond my reach.”

“And you looked like something I did not deserve.”

Maggie wrapped her arms around Astra and kissed her shoulder.  “You know that’s not true.”

“Likewise.”

They tangled themselves all up in one another’s limbs and Maggie’s heart soared in her chest.  Something was happening, and they had needed it to happen.  

Finally, the layers were stripping away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little bit of feels to start your weekend off right :)

Astra woke in the night, curled around Maggie, no space between them.

She found she was still dwelling on the lyrics of “Loving Cup,” the song that had meant so much to Maggie.  Why did Maggie see herself as the dirty, fumbling, unworthy hero of the narrative?  

And why did Astra find herself picturing Maggie’s face by firelight when she thought of that line?

She wanted to wake her, wanted to ask her.   _ How dare you deny your own worth? _

But her frustration with Maggie was foolish, for Astra’s own view of herself was no better.  Oh, yes, she was genetically bred to be a leader, physically attractive, intelligent, strong.  And she had her powers, here on Earth.  Yet death had left Astra as humbled as the hero of “Loving Cup.”  Changed.  Not so certain of her superiority as she once had been.  

But then, the deaths she had caused always weighed more heavily in the middle of the night.

Maggie shifted against her and sighed, then yawned.  “Mm,” she mumbled, “Ally.”

Astra smiled and kissed the back of her neck.  “No, my fearsome little one.  It is only me.”

Maggie nestled back against her.  “Mm, fearsome,” she sighed, her eyes still closed.  “I like that.”

Her response made Astra’s heart sigh a little.  Maggie was fearsome, surely, but lying like this, she was so small and soft that it filled Astra with affection and tenderness.

Astra missed Alex too.  “Alex will be with us tomorrow night,” she murmured against Maggie’s skin.  “Tonight it is only you and me.”  She tucked her arm more firmly around Maggie’s waist.

“That’s not so bad, is it?”  Maggie yawned.

Astra kissed the back of her head.  “No, I think we will be fine.”

Quiet fell for a few minutes then, while Astra considered what had already happened between them in the time that Alex had been away.  How she had addressed Maggie’s fears and touched her intellect, and shared in something she loved immensely (and found that she loved it too), and how they had opened their bodies to one another in new ways.  Fine, she thought, rather understated the weekend they were having.

As if reading her mind, Maggie sighed, “Better than fine, babe.”

Astra was amused and also felt a strange tickle in her stomach when Maggie addressed her that way.  She heard her use it with Alex as well.  Alex only ever addressed Astra as “baby” when she was struggling not to lose her mind over something Astra had done, or attempting to not panic over something she was afraid Astra was going to do.   _ Astra, baby, we can’t get into a turf war with the downstairs neighbors, please put down the SuperSoaker. _

Maggie laid her arm over Astra’s, pinning it tight to her.  “I think we needed this, you know?”  Her voice was still sleepy, but her mind was clearly becoming more awake.

“Mm,” Astra agreed, enjoying the way Maggie had taken ownership of her arm.

“I mean…”  There was a very long pause and Astra was just starting to wonder if Maggie had fallen back to sleep.  Then she spoke.  “...we needed to see each other.  Not like…”  She paused for another yawn.  “...Not like in your scriptures, not the… the recognition thing. The spiritual thing.  We just needed to see each other, like… like people.”

Astra understood what Maggie was trying to say.  She and Maggie had felt the magnetic pull to each other, but they had needed to know each other in the sort of messy, mundane ways she and Alex had shared.  This weekend had laid some pieces on the board.  

“Ally’s too good for us,” Maggie added after a moment, in a seeming tangential observation.

Astra sighed.  “Then we are fortunate that worthiness is not a requirement for love.  From either Rao, Yahweh, or the human heart.”

Maggie opened her eyes now, and turned over.  Astra lifted her head and rearranged so that she could stay curled up as close as possible to her, with her head resting on Maggie’s chest.  “You’re not even gonna argue with me about that one?” she ribbed.  But she was serious too, Astra thought.

Astra shook her head.  “No.  Who are we?  You and I?  We are the man on the mountain, with the face full of mud, yes?  If you are fumbling, and I am stumbling, then only Alex is left to be the beautiful girl whose face we watch in the firelight.  I cannot argue that.”

Maggie laughed.  “Damnit, you were really paying attention to the lyrics.”

Astra nodded.  “You said it was your song.  Of course I was.”

Maggie kissed her softly, and then looked at her, puzzled.  “But why’s  _ your _ face full of mud?”

Astra tilted her chin and gazed down the smooth plains of Maggie’s body.  “You surely are smart enough to detect that,” she reproached softly.

“You’re an immigrant,” Maggie joked.

Astra shook her head, amused.  “I am, but that is not why.”

“Really?” Maggie seemed surprised.  “My mom was an immigrant.  It was hard for her.  Me too.  People in Nebraska, they could be a little… provincial.  Make you feel like an outsider even if you were born here.”

Astra nodded.  “Is that the mud on your face?”

“Some of it.”  She felt Maggie’s finger hook under her chin and tilt her face back up.  “But we’re talking about yours, now.  You were an outsider on Krypton, right?”

Astra nodded.  “Because I was a twin.  We were an accident.  Alura’s response was to become a model Kryptonian, but I…. I never fit.  I was not destined.”

Maggie stroked her cheek.  “I wasn’t exactly planned either.”

“But that is normal for your people.”  Astra sighed.  “No, I was something different and apart.  No matter how I tried to fit within the system and fight for what I thought to be right, I was ever the one who did not belong.”

“A remainder,”  Maggie said quietly.  

Astra nodded.  “A remainder.”

Maggie kissed her then, with soft passion, lingering against her lips for long enough that the world seemed to stop.  “But you’re … righteous,” Maggie whispered.  “Brave, principled…”

“And I tried to take over the world,” Astra reminded her.

Maggie scoffed.  “Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.  And I bombed buildings on Krypton.  When the government was destroying our world, I bombed buildings to  protest it.”

Maggie tangled fingers in Astra’s hair and then, as she often did, took a bit of that white streak between her thumb and fingers, and worried it for a minute without speaking.  “So what?  You can rebuild buildings.”

Astra’s chest felt heavy with regret.  “There were people inside.”

Maggie stopped, and looked at her, serious.  She waited for Astra to say more.

“We did not know,” Astra went on, her voice growing thick with regret.  “It was supposed to be empty.  I killed fifty of my brothers and sisters.”

Astra had been hurt most by the look on her sister’s face, the recrimination.  It was one thing in war, you had to kill sometimes.  But that had not been meant to be that kind of war.  This was just supposed to put the fear of Rao into the Elders.  Nothing more.  She hoped to not see the same look on Maggie’s face.  She feared it might break her.

But she only looked pained, sympathetic, sad for her.  “We all have mistakes that keep us up at night,” she said after a moment.  Her eyes looked wet.

“Do you think less of me?”

Maggie shook her head.  “It was war,” she whispered.  “And you’re not that person anymore.”

Astra was not so sure.  Her brow furrowed and her heart ached, and she hung tight to Maggie’s body.  “But that person is part of me.”  Her eyes welled up.  “I was dead already when Non enacted Myriad,” she continued.  “But it was my plan.  I could not stop what I had set in motion.  And you and Alex would both be dead now if Kara had not succeeded in stopping it.”

“And you  _ were _ dead,” Maggie reminded her.  “Alex stabbed you through the heart with a Kryptonite sword, you know, so… maybe she’s not too good for you!”

“I suppose there is that,” Astra admitted after a moment.  And then, inexplicably, they both started to laugh.  They laughed until tears were trickling from the corners of their eyes, and Maggie was kissing her and laughing and crying.

She said through her wanton display of emotions, “Astra… we all suck, okay?  We all suck, but there’s good in all of us.”

Astra, still laughing and crying, replied, “Yes… but aside from stabbing me, Alex is too good for us both!”  They hung onto each other, convulsing, and for a while, the laughter only got harder instead of easing off.  She felt a supreme, uncomplicated release in it.  “We all suck,” she gasped, her chortling wracking her frame as she lay there holding onto Maggie.

They calmed down eventually, but Maggie was making little whimpering noises.  “I’m gonna kill you,” she groaned, “my stomach muscles literally hurt from laughing.”  

Then they were quiet for a minute.

Then Maggie added, “And you tried to take over the world, but aside from that, you’re too good for me.”   


They giggled a little, then, but had nothing left in them for a full-out belly-laugh.

After a moment, Astra asked, “And what about you, Maggie?  Why do you suck?”

“Oh,” Maggie sighed, “well, you know.  I ripped the tags off all my mattresses.”

“What?”

Maggie scoffed at herself.  “Sorry.  That’s a very human joke.”  She paused for a moment, seeming lost in thought.  Then she answered, “You know, I’ve killed a few people.  In the line of duty.  Couldn’t be helped.  I don’t regret it, at least, not much.  I don’t feel like I did anything wrong.  I don’t have, one big, dramatic regret.”

Astra gazed at her, confused.  “What, then?”

“It’s more that… I have a million little ones.”  She shifted and then turned in Astra’s arms so that they were chest to chest, foreheads touching.  “I have a million times when I pushed someone out, or disregarded their feelings, or protected myself instead of taking a chance and loving someone, because I was afraid of being hurt.  A million little times when I pretended not to notice the hurt in someone’s eyes when I couldn’t just… care.  Just...be vulnerable.  Just think for a minute about what they needed.  But I noticed.  And I … well, maybe not all of them, but I regret most of them.”

Astra let Maggie breathe and soak in the quiet for a few minutes.  Then she kissed her forehead and whispered, “Maggie.”

“Hm?”

And in her softest, gentlest voice, she murmured.  “You suck too.”

Maggie chuckled silently.  “Yeah.”

Astra kissed her again.  “But it’s alright.”   


“Mm?”

“Mm.”

Maggie’s arm circled Astra’s waist and her soft fingertips trailed down Astra’s back.  

“Maybe we’re all the man,” Maggie mumbled, nestling against Astra and flinging her leg over Astra’s thigh to press in closer.  “And maybe the girl is just the love that we have.  You know?  The thing that we make when we’re together, the three of us, that’s the beautiful girl in the firelight.”

Astra shivered a little at the feel of Maggie’s body against hers.  “I like that,” she whispered.  

A long silence passed as they settled into each other and their breathing slowed.

“It feels true,” Maggie mumbled as she began to drift back off to slip.

“Mm,” Astra agreed.  She slipped into waking dreams, and the last she remembered feeling was Maggie’s breath warm against her lips, and her sweet, smoking voice, whispering, “I love you, General.”

“Mm,” Astra said again.

It meant something to hear the words, the way that humans said them.


	5. Chapter 5

Maggie’s phone was ringing far too early on a Sunday.

She rolled over, glanced at it.  It was work.  It was Bernardi.  Groaning, she picked it up.  “This better be important if you’re going to bother me at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday.”

“Possible hostage situation,” he answered tersely.

She sighed.  “You know, there are other detectives in National City besides me.”

“Yeah well this one kinda has your name all over it.  Kidnappers are guys with funny heads and big eyes.  Seemed like your type of thing.”

Maggie yawned out loud.  “For fuck’s sake,” she muttered.  “Can you give me more than that?  Funny heads?  Big eyes?”

“We’ve had a little trouble getting a good look,” he acknowledged, “but they’re big.  Broad shoulders, scaly-looking, greenish-yellowish skin maybe, big heads, looks like a fin or a little crest or something on top.”

Astra shifted next to her in the bed.  “Lumians,” she grunted, disapprovingly.  “Tell them not to engage until we arrive.”

“You get that?” Maggie said.  “Don’t do anything till we get there.”

“Bringin’ your girlfriend?”

“What’s the point of dating a Super if she’s not gonna come along on a hostage campout?”

“You got a point.  We’re at Pier 17.  See you in 30?”

“Faster if I can manage it.”  She was instantly more alert than she was a few moments ago.  Her pulse was picking up and her body was getting ready to spring into action.  She turned over and pulled Astra into a hot kiss.  “Come on, babe.  Time to suit up.”

  
  


****

 

Maggie threw on her blacks and a kevlar vest, pulling her hair back into a messy ponytail.  Astra emerged from the bathroom in her sparkling green and blue performance suit that tossed little pearls of light around the room when she moved.  Maggie paused long enough to appreciate it.  Astra was a sight in that thing.  It reminded Maggie that this woman, her lover, was something nearing god-like.  It reminded her that she got to touch everything that Astra was, every night.  She shook off the moment and locked the door, and then Astra drew her close, and held her tight as she jumped down the four flights of stair and landed a little too heavily at the bottom.   Maggie winced as she heard a couple of small floor tiles crack under Astra’s boots.

“You saw nothing,” Astra deadpanned.   
  
“I don’t even know what you mean,” Maggie countered, smirking.

They strode out to Maggie’s bike.  “So, do you wanna climb on back, or should I just meet you down there?”

Astra frowned.  “We should arrive together.”   


“So climb on back then?”

Astra shook her head.  “No.  I will carry you.”

“We might need the bike, though,” Maggie objected.  “What if we have to split up?”

Astra considered her for a moment, then looked at the bike.  “Get on, and I will carry both you and the vehicle.”

Maggie snorted.  “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

Astra folded her arms and gave her an offended look.  “I do not have a sense of humor of which I’m aware,” she responded archly.

Maggie laughed.  “Okay, okay.  How do you envision this working?”

Astra nodded toward the bike.  “Get on and start it, ride it as you normally would.  I will fly in behind you, and grab the frame and lift the bike.”

Maggie had to concede, she was impressed with that idea.  “You can keep it level, right?”

“Do not worry,” Astra sighed impatiently, “I will not drop you.”

Maggie nodded, thinking it over for a minute.  They would be able to get there in ten minutes instead of thirty.  No worrying about downtown traffic.  “Alright, what the hell,” she decided, and shrugged.  She mounted the bike, started it, and glanced over her shoulder at Astra, who stood there with her blue-green suit shimmering and her arms folded across her chest.  She winked at her, revved the engine twice, and roared off down the street.

About half a minute later, she felt peripherally aware of Astra’s approach from behind her, coming in low, at about waist level, as she picked up speed.  And then she was aware of Astra’s arms reaching down and grabbing the bike’s frame, and then, of the slight lurch in her stomach as she and the bike were lifted into the air.  For a moment, she dwelled in the sensation of lightness, of the wind in her face, the rumble of the bike, and the feeling of weightlessness as the road dropped away from beneath her.  She drank in the sensation of rising, and looked out as the city became smaller, until it was just them, and the rumble of the bike, and rushing air.

She was on her bike, in the air, flying.  Because she was with a girl who could do that.

As they arced over the city, Maggie collected herself and called Bernardi again to get more information about what they were walking into.

“How many hostages?  How many hostage takers?  Have they made any demands yet?”

No demands yet.  Their visual was incomplete as the windows on the warehouse they were in were awkwardly placed but he suspected five armed Lumians and three hostages, human as far as he could tell.  

“Lumians are not the kind of species who ought to be armed,” Astra shouted as they flew.

“Why’s that?”   


“They are of poor intelligence, rash, quick tempered.”

Bernardi described the warehouse:  a front entrance with large loading doors, two smaller doors on the side, another loading door at the back.  The loading doors appeared to have been welded shut, leaving the two smaller doors, which were guarded, so far as they could tell.

They would be expecting any forced entry to occur at the smaller doors, they agreed, but Astra suggested that she be allowed to break through the welds on the front door and engage them.

“If they’re rash and quick tempered,”  Maggie answered, “that doesn’t sound great.  The second you turned your heat vision on those doors, those hostages would be in danger.”

“Well,” Astra thought after a moment, “I could break through.  I could just crash through without opening the welds.”

Maggie laughed.  “Well, that’d be an entrance.  They wouldn’t expect it.  Only problem is, then what?”

“You get the hostages out and I engage the Lumians.”

“You could get them out faster than I could.  Put on that super speed and you could have them out of their hands before they even knew what hit them."

"But I can only take two at a time."

"I'll free the third.  I can keep them busy while you get them out and then you can come back and help me.”

As they drew closer, Maggie could smell the ocean and see the dazzling sun on the open water, and they began to fly lower as they identified the pier, and the warehouse with the police cars ringed out front.  She called Bernardi again.  Astra’s X-ray vision was able to pin down six assailants, not five, and three hostages.  She quickly calculated the force needed to crash through the front loading doors and then the speed required to retrieve all three hostages.  She would, she decided, be best served not by exiting the way she entered, but through the back doors.  It did involve crashing another set of doors, but it meant a better chance of getting everyone out alive.  Astra decided they would tell Bernardi to be ready with a small group to rush in the back doors too.  Then the Lumians would be trapped from both sides.  They might not need to even fire a shot.  

They drew closer.  Astra focused her vision.  One hostage, one Lumian near the front loading doors.  Two more hostages closer to the back, both guarded by one Lumian each.  Two more Lumians near the side doors.  Maggie would get the one near the front, Astra the two near the back.  “Alright, Bernardi!” Maggie hollered as they quickened their descent.  “Incoming!”

She felt the thud in her bones as the bike struck the pavement a hundred feet from the front loading doors.  Astra whipped past her, a sparkling green and blue blur, and hit the doors just a few seconds ahead of her, blowing them wide with the force of her body.  The sound of rupturing steel made a loud, deep report off the faces of the other neighboring warehouses.  She made a mental note to marvel at that later, at how much power was in Astra’s body, at how much restraint it really must take for her to be so gentle with her.

Maggie roared in behind her, screeched to a halt in front of the doors, and in a smooth motion, whipped her electric baton out and jabbed in the side of the Lumian’s neck.  He went down, convulsing.  

She glanced up and saw the shimmering blur that was Astra just before she struck the back set of loading doors and the light came streaming in off the water.  Her eyes darted toward the back and she saw no additional humans, so she knew that Astra had successfully managed to grab them before they knew what was happening.  

Bernardi’s guys were streaming in through the back now, and Maggie jumped down off the bike because the five Lumians left standing were starting to fire their disruptors.  She crouched down, and grabbed the collar of the young woman who had been held hostage just a moment ago, next to the still-twitching body of the alien she’d put down.  “Stay down,” she called over the sound of disruptor fire.  

The young woman nodded.

Maggie peeked out and she could see one of them had broken from the group and was heading toward her.  Oh well, she thought, hoped we could get away with just the baton for this one but no such luck.  She pulled her Glock and took aim at his shoulder.

What happened next was a little blurry in Maggie’s memory when she pieced it together later.

Lumian disruptor fire, acidic yellow.  She put down the one who approached her with two shots to the shoulder.  More of Bernardi’s guys were coming through the front, now.  The remaining Lumians were outnumbered three to one and surrounded.  Astra appeared in the middle of the room and disarmed the four of them.  They surrendered.  

She remembered guiding the hostage out through the shattered front loading doors, over to where the mobile trauma unit was waiting.

She remembered looking down at her shoulder and noticing that it burned.   _ Oh, gee.  Disruptor burn.   _

Astra was by her side a moment later.  “You are injured,” she observed with a frown.   _ Her eyes, so wide and blue like the sea,  _ Maggie thought.  _  She looks so scared. _

“It’s not my first disruptor burn, babe,” she assured her. It was really starting to throb.  She remembered this.  Unconsciousness was coming.

“Stop being so brave, stupid human.  You need the trauma unit,” came Astra’s voice.  

Things were feeling a little weird and murky and black.   _ Damn, that shit hurts.  There’s always a delayed reaction with that stuff.    _ “Nah, it’s alright.  Just pour some Robitussin on it.”  She chuckled at her own stupid joke.

Astra did not seem amused.  “I do not understand this human joke, but you need treatment.”

_ Robitussin, _ Maggie giggled in her head.  And then she kind of went to sleep standing up for a little bit.

  
  


*******

  
  


She woke up at home.  She was lying on the couch, half propped up, her shoulder bandaged.  Astra had stripped her out of her blacks and she was in underwear and a tank top, and had a large, fluffy quilt over her.  Astra was hovering nearby.  The minute she saw Maggie’s eyes open, she came and knelt next to her.

“Thank Rao,” she whispered, and kissed her forehead.

Maggie smiled weakly.  She glanced around.  “What time is it?”

“Almost four,” Astra answered, brushing hair from Maggie’s forehead.  Maggie grimaced.  She hated losing her entire day to a nap, even if she had a good reason.  Seeing her displeasure, Astra scolded,  “You needed the rest.”

Maggie waved a hand.  “It happens, Astra.  Comes with the territory.”

“You should have–”

“I should have nothing,” Maggie interrupted her sharply.  “You couldn’t have done the whole thing yourself.  The way we did it made sense.”

Astra sighed.  She was a soldier, she knew Maggie was right.  Still, it wasn’t about to stop her from fussing over her.  She brought her a glass of iced water, which Maggie drank gratefully.  She was thirsty.  Astra fixed her a sandwich of soy cheese and sprouts on a whole wheat baguette.  She offered to put something on television, so Maggie opted for the Padres game.  And they curled up together and watched the game, Maggie explaining the rules as they watched, resting her head on Astra’s shoulder.  Astra kept asking if she needed anything, which was sweet at first, but finally Maggie exclaimed, “Astra, stop!  Just hang out with me, ok?  That’s all I need from you.”

At five o clock came the scraping of Alex’s keys in the lock.  “Hey babe!”  Maggie called over her good shoulder.

Alex came breezing in, looking refreshed and happy.  “Hey you two!  Did you have a good–?”

She paused, looking at how they were curled up together.  She looked at the bandage on Maggie’s shoulder.  

“Jesus, Astra.   I leave you two alone for two days and you go and break our girlfriend!” she scolded, not entirely serious, but … well, maybe a little.

“We dealt with a hostage situation this morning,” Astra supplied.  “Maggie took a disruptor burn to the shoulder.”

“Of course this happens when I’m not there to fix it,” Alex grumbled.

“It is alright,” Astra assured her, and that little smirk played around the corners of her mouth.  “We poured Robitussin on it.”

Alex laughed.  “So I guess you watched Chris Rock this weekend?” she asked Maggie.

“No, but we had a really good time,” Maggie answered with a tired smile.  “Sit down, Al.  First you tell us about your trip, and then we’ll tell you about what we got up to.”


	6. Chapter 6

Alex’s weekend sounded positively serene; all spent in silence the entire time, long stretches of meditation, walks among the rolling hills in the sunshine, and then this morning had been kissed by a gentle mist.  She had enjoyed the peace and, although she was among a group of about twenty that had come up for that sitting, relative solitude assisted.  She described the skies over Napa, and the delicious meals that the roshi’s wife prepared (which were all vegetarian and Maggie would have loved them).  She looked particularly beautiful, Astra thought.

She glossed over her meeting with the roshi, and instead, hurried along to asking them about their time together in her absence.   They were tumbling over themselves, finishing each other’s thoughts in their eagerness to tell her what they’d done while she was gone.

“Well,” Maggie began, “we went to the museum.”

“Yes.  Maggie took me to the Jackson Pollocks.”

“And then she explained them to me.”

“And then we saw some Georgia O’Keefe’s.”

“She saw one that she said looked like you.”

“But it did!”

“She’s not wrong.”

“So we had to come home in great haste to make love.”

“We missed you,” Maggie added.  Then the mood shifted from cheerful and teasing to something softer.  

“It was strange, at first, without you,” Astra continued, looking fondly at her Maggie, and then her Alex.  The sight of her was welcome indeed, not because Maggie was not enough, but because Alex made what had they feel like unfathomable abundance.  

Alex smiled, but said nothing.

“But then…”  And then Maggie smiled, and her entire being lit with warmth.  Her dimples, Astra decided, were what made her smile so enchanting.  “...we kind of… fell into each other.”  And she gave Astra a little glance that made the emotions of the entire weekend bubble up all at once inside her chest.  

Alex looked pleased.  “I’m glad to hear it.”

Astra released Maggie’s hand and moved over.  She patted the space between them on the couch.  “Come, sit here.”

Alex slid in between them.  It took a few minutes of wriggling and shifting until they found their proper fit, but after a few moments, Astra was leaning on the arm of the couch, with Alex’s head resting on her shoulder, and Maggie next to Alex, legs thrown over both Astra and Alex’s legs.

“We went to see Street Fighting Man at the Korean,” Maggie said as she settled in.

“It was glorious!” Astra exclaimed, remembering the thunder of the bass in her gut, and dancing with Maggie, and the racing of their hearts.

Alex nodded her approval.  “They play your song, babe?”

“Loving Cup?  Oh yeah.”  Maggie was grinning.  “I think it made us fall more in love with each other.”  She peered around at Astra for confirmation.

Astra nodded.  “It did.”  She took Alex’s hand.  “Also, we realized we both suck.”

Alex laughed.  Maggie grabbed her other hand.  “Yeah,” Maggie concurred.  “It’s true.”

“We thought for a moment that perhaps you were too good for us,” Astra began.

Alex shot her a raised eyebrow.  

“Yeah, but then I reminded her that you killed her so… probably not,”  Maggie contributed.

“Gee, thanks,” Alex scoffed.

Astra kissed Alex’s shoulder.  “You suck too, Alex.  It is alright.  We are equals that way.”

Alex laughed.  She kissed Maggie’s hand and then tipped her head back to catch Astra’s lips on her jawline.  “Fair enough, I guess.”

They settled into each other a little more.  

“Maggie and I grew closer while you were away,” Astra murmured after a few quiet minutes of watching the game.  “We opened our hearts, and bodies, and we came to know one another more deeply.  It was important.”

Alex smiled and squeezed her hand.  A few more easy, quiet minutes went by while the men in pajamas on the television did things that Maggie and Alex seemed annoyed by.  “He runs like he has a load in his pants,” Alex grumbled at one point.

“The thing is,” Maggie added after a few more minutes, “Astra and I knowing each other more, loving each other more, it makes the whole thing, all three of us, stronger.”

Alex nodded.  “I get it.  Each leg of the triangle has to be strong or the whole thing collapses.”

“I think we should make a habit of this.  Of making room for the individual pairs to have time and intimacy,” Maggie decided.

They all agreed it was a good idea.  

During the game, they shared the story of the rescue op, and Alex seemed a little jealous at Maggie’s flying motorcycle experience.  But she applauded them and their wild bravery, and then they cooked dinner.  They turned in early that night, and made gentle, leisurely love to each other, since they still had to take care with Maggie’s bandaged shoulder.  

Astra slipped off to sleep that night, unable to stop thinking about it.

  


********

 

Astra had looked up what Robitussin was.  It was something humans used to treat a cough.  She questioned Maggie as to why she would joke about pouring Robitussin on her disruptor burn.

Maggie smiled.  She explained that a famous humorist, Chris Rock, had a series of jokes about this subject.  When you were poor in America, she explained, you could not get proper care for your ills and injuries.  And so, if you were poor, you did what you could afford, and cough medicine was cheap.  And so he had a series of jokes about growing up poor and treating everything with cough medicine, including a broken leg, because it was all he could afford.

Astra was horrified.  It had not occurred to her that the humans could be so heartless that they did not take care of their own.  Maggie and Alex and those close to them were so good and kind.  She did not understand how Maggie could find this funny.

“Look, Astra,” Maggie tried to explain, “I have been poor at points in my life.  And yeah.  It’s brutal, being poor in this country.  So, you have to be able to laugh about it, or… or you just… you’ll go crazy.”

Maggie insisted that she received very good care thanks to her job, but nevertheless, Astra did not like the sound of any of this.  

And so, Astra found herself a few days later, standing in front of a temple of Maggie’s faith.  Her tiny lover worshipped the nailed God, or at least, she did sometimes.  Maggie joked that she was a Catholic of convenience, a concept Astra didn't quite understand.  But then, Catholics were confusing.  They seemed to have many gods and yet she was repeatedly told there was only the one.  Explanations of the Trinity made her head hurt even more.

However, what she wanted ought to be simple enough, she hoped.  She pushed the thick wooden door open and stepped inside.

The door closed behind her with an echoing thunk that reverberated high up into the vaulted ceilings.  As soon as the door shut, she was enveloped by a thick quiet.  She smelled candles, and the perfume of lingering incense.  Light filtered in warm colors through the glass mosaics in the windows and she noticed the marble statues around the periphery of the room, all robed and looking solemn and noble.  The Catholics and their gods who were not gods.  

A few souls sat in the wooden benches that led up to the raised altar in the front.  They sat, looking up at the carving of the nailed god which hung over the altar, or else kneeling and muttering prayers that Astra’s sharp ears could hear, but that made little sense to her.  The atmosphere was not so different from the temple of Rao that she had attended in her younger years.  

She wandered over to the rows of candles at the far side of the temple.  Some were lit, some were not.  She absorbed for a moment the smell of melting wax, and gazed at the flickering flames in their little red glasses, wondering what they were for.

A portly older man, graying and with a slight shuffle to his step, approached her.  He wore a dark frock, like the priests of this faith did.  She inclined her head to him out of respect for the fact that she was in his house.

“Need to light a candle, my child?” he inquired.

She paused.  She knew little of the rituals of this faith.  “I… I do not know,” she admitted after a moment.

He smiled faintly.  “Well, why is it that you’ve come to the Lord’s house today?”

She hesitated.  “I wish to pray for protection over someone who is dear to me.  I cannot pray to my own God, because he is too far away.  But I thought perhaps, I might pray to hers… if her god listens to the prayers of those who are not his children.”

He nodded slowly, considering her words.  “Well, it’ll relieve you to know that this God takes all comers, more or less.”

She raised a surprised eyebrow.  “Is that so?”

He nodded.  “Mm. It’s sort of one of the benefits of the faith.  You have to give yourself to him, of course, and accept the gifts of his salvation, but there’s no barrier to entry.”

She shivered.  She did not want to follow the nailed god.  She did not understand the intricacies of his faith.  “I do not wish to leave my own faith.  I merely wish to ask her god to protect her.”

He nodded.  “I see.”  He thought for a moment.  “Protect her from what?”

Astra hesitated.  “She… she has a dangerous job.  She is a police officer.  She was shot the other day, and while she is unharmed in any permanent way, I thought perhaps to appeal to her god, that he might keep extra watch over her.”

The priest gave her a sympathetic look.  “I see.  Well, I’m happy to pray with you.  I’m not sure if he’ll listen to your prayers but I’m pretty sure he’ll listen to mine.”

She smiled faintly.  “I would appreciate that,” she decided.  

He invited her to sit in a wooden bench not far from where the candles glowed in silence.  He took her hands, bowed his head, and uttered a short prayer, much of which Astra did not understand.  She thanked him when he was done.

“Now,” he said after they’d finished. “You might want, just as an extra gesture, to give her a St. Christopher medallion.  They’re quite popular.  Just in case.”

Astra tilted her head curiously.  “What does she do with it?”

He chuckled.  “You really are new to this, aren’t you.  She wears it.  On a necklace or a little chain around the wrist.  It’s meant to offer protection.”

Maggie wasn’t the jewelry type, mostly, but Astra thought that Maggie would wear it, even if it was only when heading into danger, if Astra insisted.  

“Saint Christopher?”

“He’s one of our very popular saints,” the priest said, seeming faintly amused.

“I do not understand saints.  They are not gods?”

He shook his head.  “No.  They are human beings whom God has granted special gifts and powers, and they help him to look after the multitudes of his vast flock.”

This was the first thing he’d said that made any sense.  She wondered whether Rao had saints that were simply never mentioned in the liturgy.  “Alright,” she decided.  “I will buy the necklace.”

She purchased the medallion and headed home, thanking him humbly for his patience and kindness.  The nailed god was not so awful, she thought, though he was still strange to her.  

She mused on the notion of saints some more as she considered how she would present her gift to Maggie.  She had no idea what sort of negotiations went on between the various gods when one prayed for the child of another god.  She supposed it did not matter.  Maggie was a child of the nailed god, and St. Christopher was one of his servants.  She would wear the medallion and that would be that.

She thought of their life together as she soared home.  She thought of her own death, of her own rebirth.  How Alex and Maggie shepherded her through life on this earth.  Perhaps, since Rao was so far away, he had sent these two to her.  His saints, she thought, though both would laugh at such a suggestion.  But they offered her the protection and love that he was too far to give her himself.  

No matter how she looked at it, they always added up to three.  No matter the angle, there was order to the universe; in the light of Alex’s eyes, in the warmth of Maggie’s smile, in the symmetry of Mondrian and the ordered chaos of Pollock.  In the pounding thunder of rock and roll. In the balance of their intimacy and the symmetry of their bodies in the bed they shared.  In the existence of warrior spirits, and of saints.  Her god loved her, she was sure of it.

There was no question.  And there was no remainder.


End file.
